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When the tides of history are moving in the right direction, idealistic individuals can ride the current and pull a few others along. Otherwise, I am irresistibly reminded of the old cartoon of a movie director calling instructions down to the three actors dressed as pitchfork-carrying peasants confronting a phalanx of thousands of chain-mailed horsemen: "Okay, Kirk baby, let's take it from your line, "Follow me! They can't stop men who want to be free!'"
So on learning that the 25-year-old California photographer who usernames herself SwingKidVote is extending her voter registration drive to Nevada after this past weekend's solo trip to Florida, I heartily recommend giving yourself the pleasure of reading her slightly more than two-week-old blog: http://swingkidvote.blogspot.com/.
I don't know how many new voters for Obama she signed up (the one comment on her blog is from a woman she met during her sign-up stint, who states that she is voting for Obama while her husband is leaning towards voting McCain), but the whole project is so blissfully against the odds, and so in line with the utterly unrealistic utopian dream of a twenty-first-century digitally networked community of mutual aid, that I can hardly stand it.
I am, of course, quite willing to entertain the prospect that this is all a piece of performance art, a cynical attempt to score free weekends in Florida or Nevada, or what have you, but it is all so suffused with last-minute improvisation and endearing earnestness. If it were anything other than genuine, it would deserve high praise for being such a successful simulation.
In fact, what confirms the site's authenticity for me is the fact that when I just now revisited it, the particularly endearing report from the field that elicited the comment I cited above had been pulled.
So on learning that the 25-year-old California photographer who usernames herself SwingKidVote is extending her voter registration drive to Nevada after this past weekend's solo trip to Florida, I heartily recommend giving yourself the pleasure of reading her slightly more than two-week-old blog: http://swingkidvote.blogspot.com/.
I don't know how many new voters for Obama she signed up (the one comment on her blog is from a woman she met during her sign-up stint, who states that she is voting for Obama while her husband is leaning towards voting McCain), but the whole project is so blissfully against the odds, and so in line with the utterly unrealistic utopian dream of a twenty-first-century digitally networked community of mutual aid, that I can hardly stand it.
I am, of course, quite willing to entertain the prospect that this is all a piece of performance art, a cynical attempt to score free weekends in Florida or Nevada, or what have you, but it is all so suffused with last-minute improvisation and endearing earnestness. If it were anything other than genuine, it would deserve high praise for being such a successful simulation.
In fact, what confirms the site's authenticity for me is the fact that when I just now revisited it, the particularly endearing report from the field that elicited the comment I cited above had been pulled.
